Category: General

Artemis

~ GraydonJonesWriter

08/12/2022

A bit late for November, but here it is.

Technogasmic

Did you watch the launch of Artemis 1?

I must admit to enjoying the full technogasmic experience, watching the liftoff of Artemis One on 16th November 2022. I doubt I’ll see the colonisation of Mars, or even the Moon, in my lifetime, but the thought of the Artemis programme and what they’re hoping to achieve is truly awe-inspiring, and something I will follow closely.
If you missed the launch, go here for the entire YouTube event broadcast live by NASA.
I used the word — my own, newly invented word — technogasmic, because of the excellent commentary that accompanied the video.

Some of the highlights for me:-

T -06:12, They bring the High Energy systems online.
T -04:57, Space Force arm the Flight Termination system… This gives Space Force the ability to self-destruct the rocket if it goes in the wrong direction.
T -02:30 Watching the engines ‘gimbal’….
T -01:30 Computers now on internal power
T -00:30 ALS takes over – Autonomous, Launch Sequencer.
And, of course, the spectacular ignition sequence…
T -00:07s, Flooding the mobile launcher with water

For anyone writing Sci-Fi, this was inspiring.

I must mention some of the camera angles and the quality of the pictures. Visually stunning, and a far cry from the picture I saw as a small boy in 1969. The TV was a small black and white box that my mum and dad rented, but, on it, I was blown away watching Apollo 11’s liftoff and then Neil Armstrong’s walk on the Moon.

Talking about that old TV…

National Space Centre

My birthday treat this year was a trip to the UK’s National Space Centre. It’s located in Leicester because of the research links the local university has with space agencies such as NASA and the ESA, dating back to the early 60s. Back then, their focus was on X-ray and research technology.

There were many interesting things to see ranging from a Blue Streak rocket from the 1950s, an actual 1960s Soyuz spacecraft to mock-ups of a room with… yes, an old TV set that people ‘back then’ would have watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on.

The high point of the day, for me, was the Sir Patrick Moore’s Planetarium. Blew me away – sufficed to say, well worth a visit.

Escape from Hades

My own writing is going well, and I’m on track to complete the rewrite to ‘Escape from Hades’ by the 16th of December. This rewrite was to improve the beginning of the story. I believe it has worked, and in doing so, I changed some of the cast; again, I believe that has worked. Over the coming weeks, I will revisit the blurb and synopsis after completing the final 2 chapters. I’m hoping to have the whole thing reviewed by my development readers by the end of February.

Vicky – Wattpad

What else? Oh yes… I popped a short ‘deleted’ scene from another work in progress (First Contact) onto my new Wattpad account. This was prompted by hearing NASA’s Artemis Space programme was bringing together Google and Cisco to create a voice-activated control system…

I can hear the late James Doohan saying “computer”… those were the days 😉

Finally, let me wish you all a very happy Christmas and all the best for the New Year… And don’t forget to watch the stars.

In the air tonight

~ GraydonJonesWriter

The title? In truth, I couldn’t think of anything to sum up this month’s writing, so I bucked the Facebook trend of choosing the last thing I ate and the colour of my underwear and went with what I’m listening to — Phil Collins’ defining work.

Now, what a month. Gathering my thoughts I spent a lot of it in bed or under the weather, but despite this, I have completed much writing, including the re-write of my current story, Escape from Hades. I say completed, but in reality, it’s the section where I connect the new beginning of the story to the existing middle and ending. I had suspected this would be a smooth transition, but introducing three new characters and handling the demise of two others has made more things difficult for me. Yet, here on the 23rd of October 2022, I have completed that connection and, in my opinion, quite smoothly. There is the small matter of the remaining 40,000 words, but I’ll think about this tomorrow.

What else? Oh, I enjoyed some good TV, endured politics, and helped other writers by critiquing their stories.

I’ll save the good things for last and touch on the state of the Country. As a layman, I don’t see why our government can’t use a windfall tax on the energy companies to 1, help pay for government borrowing and 2, force the energy companies to invest NOW in green energy, like they should have been doing these past 12 years. But I’m neither a politician nor an economist; I’m just… enduring it, like many others. Rant over.

Good TV. Well, we’ve enjoyed watching the latest series of Professor T. Ben Miller is one of the best character/comedy actors around today, and, in my opinion, highly underrated. His portrayal of the Cambridge University criminologist Jasper Tempest, who suffers from OCD and a traumatic past, sees Miller at his understated best assisting the hapless local Bobbies to solve complex wrong-doings. I understand [from IMDB] it is based on a Belgian series of the same name, and one can’t help but draw parallels with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. This parallel echoes his past performance in another BBC production, Death in Paradise. Again, Miller plays an understated, genius detective solving the unsolvable using Agatha Christie-esque tools. Well worth a watch.

Ben Miller – Professor T

We’ve some pretty good movies, too. The latest was The Duke, starring Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren and Matthew Goode. It was after watching this film, based on a true story of one man’s determined if naïve fight against social injustice, that inspired me to write my [little] political rant, above. The characters are lovable and despite the predictable, feel-good ending, there is a little unexpected twist. Again, well worth the watch.

Last but not least, I have been determined to give back a little to fellow writers. As a member of a critique group, I, for the first time, volunteered to help other writers by reading their work and pointing out areas where they might improve. My most important rules were: to choose genres I would read (and therefore understand) and TO BE KIND. I truly believe in what we practised when bringing up our children. It’s easy to knock someone down, but it is better to be the wind beneath someone’s wings or the fertile soil in which they can grow.
With that, I can’t see a better way of signing off.

Third time lucky?

~ GraydonJonesWriter

Okay, I admit it. I am a terrible blogger. But you know how it is, right? Always distracted by this and that, mainly what I want to blog about, my writing. So the conundrum is, how to have something to blog about if I haven’t anything written to blog about?

According to many writers, a blog is an important way of getting out there. connecting with your readers. I could go on to defend my position but time is ticking so I’ll just apologise and try to do better with this attempt at blogging.